7 Comments

I wish I had had the availability to do the survey.

I do 90% of the parenting, I have never and will never hit my kids (but guess who would) and my oldest is neurodivergent as well. He goes to OT and it took begging and pleading when my job changed hours for my partner to take him to it.

I’m exhausted.

He told me that I should manage my time better to eat 3 meals a day and shower daily--like he can

The privilege is insane.

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Wow, reading all the comments/excerpts in the article - I didn’t personally write any of them, however I very well could have. So much similarity amongst how men behave in relationships and treat their partners. It’s so sad and awful.

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I’m not sure if you had any responses from gay men, however I would be very interested to know how things work parenting-wise in such a relationship.

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Related to a lot of these. I have to say parenting is a lot less stressful now I am alone. My ex actually seems to be making an effort now he doesn’t have an in house nanny/ housekeeper.

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I'd like to point out that mothers of neurodiverse children have likely had to do a lot more research than a neurotypical child's parent and are probably feeling more exhausted and alone and wondering why so that's probably a huge portion of the reason they create a big variable in this survey. They're (we - I have two high special needs children) more likely to have stumbled upon you Zawn because they're (we) beyond frustrated and have tried and tested so much. Personally I found I had to explain a lot in comments in the survey and honestly, looking back, I think my answers would have been different even 24 hours later because parenting is not predictable whatsoever. I also found it tricky to answer some of the questions like the swimming ones because my children are numerous and of varying age groups and abilities. I have a large gap between my eldest and youngest in age - 17.5 years with several children between them. So that was challenging to answer accurately. I definitely don't feel that my now 18 year old requires supervision at all and I don't feel my 12 year old requires constant supervision but my 6 year old is never out of arm's reach in the water. I also would hope other adults are watching the kids in the water but I'd never rely on them to do so without proper verbal request (like i need to quickly go to the toilet, can you keep eyes on my kids? And i'd pull the younger ones from the water completely to do so). So there's a bit nuance to my responses and I wondered if this would reflect accuracy. Also less than hours after submitting the survey and saying my husband would never name call my children, he did so right in front of me and I wondered if i was remembering accurately, had I missed this prior? Or whether i had just shunned those memories completely. Which saddened me and opened my eyes at the same time (and created a huge argument with my husband). I also found out after saying my husband rarely if ever, undermines me, that he took our son outside and threw me under a double decker bus by saying to our son that "mum doesn't care about my problems." - Implying I also didn't care about my son's problems (in the context of the conversation). My sister was present and I am glad she was because she lit a fire of rage about this as opposed to how defeated and sad I'd usually feel lately. I feel like giving up a lot lately. I'm too tired to fight.

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Another theory on the neurodivergence - my understanding is research shows that neurodiverse women are more likely to be on abusive relationships and work harder (do more domestic labour) in their intimate relationships, so are probably more likely to have found your work. Neurodiverse women are also more likely to have neurodiverse children (and to be educated on and pick up the signs).

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Any demographic differences/similarities collected or noted?

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